


Zantedeschia Mersus

by houseofthestars



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Aphrodisiacs, Dirty Talk, Hand & Finger Kink, M/M, Porn With Plot, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Sex Pollen, being really really committed to poison crafting, the least dubious consent I can possibly make sex pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:41:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24094495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houseofthestars/pseuds/houseofthestars
Summary: Zantedeschia mersuspollen, while unpleasant in many circumstances, is not necessarily lethal on its own. It is the distillation of its petals along with the rhizome extract that expands the plant’s properties into such an unpleasant demise. In fact, small doses of the pollen do a lively trade in Morfis, smeared onto small glass tiles ready to inhale. Many who have never ingested it before react similarly at first: watering eyes, a burning throat. It’s what follows that people pay for.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 29
Kudos: 315





	Zantedeschia Mersus

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the kink meme - the prompt was "Hubert gets hit with sex pollen (spell? plant) and just...goes back to his room, pretends nothing is wrong, tries to go about his day. Ferdinand knocks on his door for their usual daily work session and Hubert is in a STATE but pretending he's fine. Make them fuck. Make them fuck GOOD and a LOT."

The package that arrives in Hubert’s private offices is plain, unassuming. Unmarked beyond a contact code symbol, having never entered the state postal system. Waxed paper wrapped over linen over yet more paper. And though Hubert knows enough to open the package with gloves that run to his elbow, he can’t help but marvel at the absolute mundanity of its contents, once he has sliced one end open with a short, sharp knife. Three brown flower bulbs, the smallest flourishes of green at their tips and hair-thin, curling roots descending from their base. Ready to plant, as promised.  
  
The entries for _zantedeschia mersus_ in House Vestra’s closely guarded tomes focus on the distillation of its petals, along with the extract of a particular rhizome that grows in the south of Arundel. Chicken-scratch annotations from some long-dead hand indicate that the combination, if prepared with due care and attention, produces a odourless, tasteless, fast acting toxin that first induces pupil dilation, confusion, sweating and muscle tremors. This is followed by a rapid increase in body temperature to the point that the victim is, essentially, boiled alive in their own skin. This demise, the notes assure Hubert, is incredibly painful and drawn out, with no known antidote.  
  
An appropriate end, Hubert has decided, for a number of prominent names on his shortening list.  
  
In the wild, the plant - known colloquially in the language of Morfis as the Sun’s Kiss Lily - has been culled ruthlessly, for a number of reasons. What remains is in the hands of a virulent and particularly cutthroat black market. Thus, arranging the shipment from Morfis had been a test of Hubert’s resolve, resourcefulness and patience in itself. Objectively, it was understandable given the risks: from the quagmire of arranging to import banned material to the very real danger to anyone who came into contact with the plant without appropriate protection. A great number of Hubert’s own personal favours and contacts - and a not insignificant amount of his personal finances - had been employed just to get the damnable things to Enbarr.  
  
But now, they were here, and ready to plant. Bernadetta had assisted him with preparing soil with the correct acidity and nitrogen level some days before, without asking too many details about what exactly he intended to grow and for what purpose. Getting them to grow outside of Morfis is a task in itself, to encourage them to flower is yet another, and the petals must be harvested immediately after blooming, so as to retain their potency.  
  
It is a task that has its own... unique risks. Risks that a hastily scribbled note in the margins hasten to inform him about, its brusque description enough for Hubert’s eyebrows to climb to his hairline. Risks that are almost enough to provide pause to reconsider his methods. Almost. Until, shortly after, he had secured enough of the rhizome to begin the extraction process and a contact in Hrym had sent word of a lead to pursue in Morfis for the lily. From there it had been in for silver, in for gold.  
  
Still, Hubert prides himself on being careful and methodical. The demise of these particular individuals has been a long time in the making. To hasten recklessly to its conclusion now would be folly.  
  
He takes the paper-skinned bulbs in his long-gloved hands and pushes them gently into the soil before setting a glass cover over the box. Their temperature will need to be carefully monitored so that the shoots do not shrivel before they have a chance to flourish, but the alternative does not bear considering.  
  
He passes a hand gently, thoughtfully, over the top of the glass, looking thoughtfully at the slivers of green peeking above the soil. Then he steps away, strips the gloves from his arms straight into a waiting basin, and washes his hands thoroughly.  
  
—  
  
Day by day, the shoots grow. Leaves unfurl. Hubert dons gloves and apron, lifts the glass lid. Mists the leaves, tests the soil, monitors for signs of dehydration or over-watering. Bernadetta chats to her plants when she thinks nobody else is looking; together in their conspiracy, Hubert occasionally murmurs to the sprouts of who they will kill, of the crimes they will avenge. Perhaps that will encourage their growth.  
  
One day Hubert opens the lid to find one of the plants, vibrant and green just the night before, is now a dull brown, limp and rotting. An unexplained demise that makes anxiety wrench briefly in Hubert’s chest before he calmly pulls it from the soil with tongs and sets it alight with a fire spell. The ashes have their own unpleasant properties, so are scraped into a vial and locked away. No matter. This was why he had procured more than one in the first place. Contingency.  
  
The second fails a week later, scorched by sunlight during an unexpected heatwave when Hubert is kept away from his office longer than he anticipates. This time, Hubert curses himself for his carelessness again and again as he teases away each crisp, dry leaf and stem into another vial.  
  
One plant will still make enough of the poison for his needs, but to lose this one will derail him for months. Hubert increases his monitoring of the final plant, hovering around it like a concerned parent to a somewhat more concerning child. More testing. Less misting. Monitoring of the weather. Kneeling in front of the glass lid, balancing himself on the front of his feet, willing it to thrive.  
  
Until, eventually, a stem pushes forward, with the curled nub of a bud at its very end.  
  
—  
  
The pathway agreement for Brigid’s independence has been in the making for, by Hubert’s reckoning, seven months now. With Petra on the throne and Ferdinand the main negotiator for the Empire both had been expecting a meeting of equals - if not brief, then at least amicable. However, House Ochs - as the operator of the main port between the archipelago and the mainland - has been surprisingly recalcitrant, and in Brigid a wing of the governing council, attempting to undermine the new Queen’s authority, have been interfering with anything they can possibly get their hands on. It’s exhausting, to say the least.  
  
“I do not see how they can possibly object to these import terms,” Ferdinand is saying, leaning back in his chair. His feet are propped on the table, one ankle crossed daintily over the other, and he holds sheaves of paper away from his face, in the style of the faintly hyperopic in denial. It would be endearing if it didn’t mean that he was still refusing to see the oculist. “Everything here is either already in line with prior agreements or weighted in their favour. Petra has told them a dozen times that this is more than generous and yet they refuse to vote it through.”  
  
“Clearly they see another opportunity to flex what little political muscle they have,” Hubert says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “The time to offer these fools carrots is over. Better to show them the stick before it’s too late.”  
  
Ferdinand rolls his eyes at this. “And you are far too eager to revert to bad old ways.“  
  
“I wouldn’t call it regression. Merely practicality. Both House Ochs and those geriatrics on the Brigid council are taking advantage and need to learn that the hand that overreaches may lose a finger.”  
  
“Whatever you call it, I shan’t squander what goodwill we’ve managed to forge with rash actions. Enbarr was not built in a day, you know.” Ferdinand sighs, and throws the papers back down to the table. “Well, whatever we decide, we will not resolve this at ten of the clock. I say we adjourn for the evening and I will draft another missive to Brigid in the morning for Edelgard to review.”  
  
“I can hardly wait for it to be pulled apart word by word a week from now.”  
  
“A little positivity wouldn’t go astray, Hubert,” Ferdinand says, but it’s more than a little sardonic. He sighs, and then swings his feet away from the table and onto the floor in a graceful little twist. He’s usually quick to make his farewell once it gets late, but this time as he stands he lingers in gathering up his papers, casts his eyes around the room, clears his throat.  
  
“Did you forget something?” Hubert says, pulling on his own jacket.  
  
“Ah, I... no. I was thinking that perhaps, if you were not too tired, I... it is rather a balmy night. We might take a turn around the ornamental gardens before we part ways. If you’d like.”  
  
“Oh. I—” Hubert thinks of the single bud, on the threshold of blooming, and shakes his head, curtly. “Much as I would like to, I have a prior commitment.”  
  
Ferdinand blinks, face flushing, and Hubert is as ever struck by the way the pink stains his freckled cheeks. “Oh! My apologies. I hope I. Ah. I have not kept you, or... anyone else, waiting. I did not mean to impose.”  
  
“Think nothing of it,” Hubert says, awkwardly. “We shall reconvene tomorrow once you have have your draft, yes?”  
  
“Yes,” Ferdinand says, and there’s a tone to his voice that Hubert cannot quite place. “Tomorrow it is.”  
  
—  
  
The bud is still closed when he checks on it before he retires to his quarters, but the tip is flushed with colour. It’s surely only a matter of hours. If he returns first thing, he can have the petals picked and stored before other commitments intervene.  
  
He’s so close.  
  
—  
  
The next time Hubert opens the door to his office the entire room smells like Lady Edelgard’s favoured frosted vanilla cake, cloyingly sweet, and it takes a moment to understand exactly why until he sees a flash of colour by the window and adrenaline briefly grips him by the sternum.  
  
Beneath the glass: a curled trumpet, yellow at its tips blushing to a deep red at its centre, around a thick, pollen-heavy stamen. Hubert is looking at a Sun’s Kiss Lily, in all its deadly beauty, and he has to let out a long, slow breath to regain his composure.  
  
No time to waste. Long gloves, apron. Scalpel, secateurs and tweezers. Pestle and mortar. A wipe of disinfectant over his alchemical supplies. And then a careful lifting of the glass lid, sending the sweet smell in the room to an almost nauseating intensity.  
  
Hubert sniffs absently and clamps the tweezers around the base of the flower, secateurs poised. Almost a shame to end the life of something so beautiful, so soon after its emergence, but such is the way of things sometimes. Perhaps the bloom sees justice in the fact it, in turn, will end other lives. Live to die, die to kill.  
  
He snips the stem of the flower, and it immediately puffs a cloud of pollen into his face, sickeningly sweet.  
  
Hubert splutters, blinks, coughs. Reflexively slackens his fingers, sends the secateurs clattering to the floor. His other hand drops the flower from his tweezers into the soil, spilling yet more pollen into the air; hardly noticed, now, not when Hubert’s eyes are suddenly watering and the back of his throat is on fire.  
  
The notes didn’t say— they hadn’t said that—  
  
It burns.  
  
—  
  
_Zantedeschia mersus_ pollen, while unpleasant in many circumstances, is not necessarily lethal on its own. It is the distillation of its petals along with the rhizome extract that expands the plant’s properties into such an unpleasant demise. In fact, small doses of the pollen do a lively trade in Morfis, smeared onto small glass tiles ready to inhale. Many who have never ingested it before react similarly at first: watering eyes, a burning throat. It’s what follows that people pay for.  
  
Hubert knows this. He too, knows that the amount thrown into his face in that one careless, thoughtless moment is far more than any one of those little tiles.  
  
It burns, it burns, and Hubert runs to the basin, plunges his face into the water, gulps some into his mouth. It burns, and when he pulls his face from the water he dry retches, because it burns and because he knows what this is supposed to do, and it’s too late, because _he_ burns.

-

Hubert towels his face dry. He empties and refills the basin with a modified fimbulvetr spell, gulps more of the icy water. He takes a deep breath, lets the air fill his lungs and leave again, though all it does is fill his senses with yet more of that cloyingly sweet scent. He cough, clears his throat, rubs wet fingers against his neck without even thinking about it. Drinks more water, lifts the basin and presses its cool enamel against his face, but he can still feel heat thrumming underneath his skin with each beat of his heart. An insidious fever.  
  
He groans in frustration. Just feet away lies the culmination of months of preparation, dropped into the soil, losing its potency with every passing minute. He cannot let his own incompetence derail him now.  
  
Hubert returns to the plant and, with a handkerchief plastered over his nose and mouth with one hand, uses the other to retrieve the lily bloom from the soil with the tweezers and drop it onto a nearby board.  
  
He can’t waste this, he thinks, not when he’s so close. Even if he fumbles the tweezers briefly as a shudder runs through him. No more pollen puffs from the bloom when he finally picks it up, and he hazily hopes that it is spent; he discards handkerchief so that he has both hands free to dissect and extract the petals and drop them into the mortar.  
  
He can’t stop. Not now.  
  
With heat-swollen, clumsy fingers he continues his work. Cut. Crush. Mix. Even if with every step something is working its way through him that sets every nerve ending ablaze and amplifies every casual brush of his own damp clothes against his skin. He can’t let this go to waste. Even when he has to brace his hands briefly against the counter, because another deep breath of that sweet scent ends up sending a juddering arousal through him and thickens his cock in his breeches. He’s so warm, he can feel, fuck, he wants— he wants—  
  
He closes his eyes, counts to thirty, and then returns to his work. Cut. Crush. Mix. For as long as it takes.  
  
—  
  
The poison is complete, and Hubert is a wreck.  
  
He stoppers the vial and pushes it away from himself frantically. Wrenches the last of the wretched bulb from the soil and sets it aflame like its long-perished sibling. Pulls the wretched long gloves from his arms and throws them into the basin, strips the apron and throws it into a box. His hands go to his shirt buttons before he remembers where he is and merely loosens the top two and pulls the wet translucent collar away from his neck. Drags his fingers along his jugular and sighs when it sends a shiver down his torso. The flower’s sickly scent is fading from the room but it lingers in the back of his nose and throat, and he absently slides his fingers down his own neck and under his shirt to his collarbones.  
  
The windows should be fogged, Hubert thinks. There should be dew upon the shelves, ink should be bleeding from the books. The room should be as close and oppressive as the relentless thump of his own pulse is telling him it is. His hand stumbles downwards, across ribs and the plane of his stomach. And then he’s palming himself through the front of his breeches almost without thinking, and he gasps open mouthed at his own touch.  
  
Hubert’s body sings to him. He needs, it says, and he moans in the empty room, hips canting into his own restless palm. He needs to be touched, he needs to fuck into his own hand, he needs the weight of a cock in his mouth, he needs to—  
  
He wrenches his hand away. He needs to get out of this room before he embarrasses himself any further.  
  
—  
  
More greedy gulps of cold water and re-buttoning his shirt collar isn’t going to undo what this flower has done to Hubert but it should be enough to get him back to his quarters. A change of clothes and a cold water wash, and he can purge the last of this flames-damned plant from his skin, and then...  
  
And then it’s case of waiting, presumably. Withstanding. Enduring. Letting the toxins flush from his system. And at some point it will be over, and this moment of incompetence can be left behind in the shameful past, forgotten as quickly as possible. All he needs to to is make it back to his quarters without—  
  
“Hubert?”  
  
“Ferdinand,” he says, and his voice cracks like he’s been parched for days. Because of course it is Ferdinand who finds him like this, stumbling down the east wing corridor like some drunken fool. And because that’s enough to send a shiver though him, hearing his own name from those lips, and the shame that follows only loops back around into its own kind of thrill, and he hates it, and his wretched biology still sings its siren song.  
  
“What perfect timing, I did not expect to find you here! I have the new draft for Brigid. if you have the time now to look through...” Ferdinand pauses, takes a step or two forward. “Hubert? Are you quite well?”  
  
“I am fine,” Hubert grits out. “Do not concern yourself. The draft, you say?”  
  
“I, ah. Yes. I think it makes a compelling argument for our stance, and reiterates our previous generosity. But it can wait if you need to—” Ferdinand reaches out a hand towards Hubert’s shoulder, but Hubert flinches away before Ferdinand can feel the heat of Hubert’s skin bleeding though the damp fabric of his shirt. And even if Ferdinand retracts his hand like he’s been burned, eyes wide and hurt like Hubert hasn’t seen since the Academy, Hubert doesn’t have the capacity for guilt. The thought of Ferdinand touching him, right now, is more than he can stand.  
  
Would Ferdinand touch him? Would Ferdinand touch him the way he needed right now? Would he hold Hubert down, scrape red lines along his inner thighs with his blunt nails, pull Hubert’s cock between his lips, let him—  
  
“The draft,” Hubert croaks. “We can, we can review it in my quarters. If that is amenable.”  
  
“Certainly,” Ferdinand says faintly, and follows Hubert down the corridor with uncharacteristic meekness.  
  
—  
  
Hubert tries, he tries so hard. To focus on the words dancing across the pages Ferdinand proffers him. To respond with any sort of coherence to Ferdinand’s increasingly concerned questions. To ignore the way his cock twitches whenever Ferdinand so much as leans forward and some faint hint of citrus nonsense brushes against Hubert’s nose. And to hold back the litany of filth that runs through his head along with each wave of arousal that crashes through him.  
  
But in the end it’s Ferdinand who throws down his pen, agitated, and demands: “Hubert, for the sake of the Saints, you need to tell me what is wrong.”  
  
Hubert forces back a shudder as best he can and gasps, “Nothing, nothing I—”  
  
“Don’t ‘nothing’ me. You look feverish. Both Edelgard and I have told you before about working when you’re sick.”  
  
This time, it isn’t even his name, just the forcefulness of Ferdinand’s words that send another wave of desire through Hubert, which is why he doesn’t react fast enough to avoid Ferdinand’s smooth, cool palm ducking under his hair and coming to rest on his forehead.  
  
“Hubert,” he breathes, shocked. “You’re burning up.”  
  
Hubert can’t think to reply, because that simple contact of another’s skin - Ferdinand’s skin - against his own is enough to send blood rushing to his cock, and he butts his head against Ferdinand’s palm with a soft noise.  
  
“Hubert?” Ferdinand pulls his hand back, slightly, and Hubert can’t help but chase it, his eyes falling closed. _Touch me,_ Hubert thinks. _Don’t stop touching me._  
  
“Don’t stop,” he whispers, and Ferdinand’s eyes widen, but he moves his hand back. Smooths the damp hair away from Hubert’s forehead. Cups his cheek with a palm.  
  
“What has happened to you?” Ferdinand says, softly.  
  
Hubert leans into the caress with another faint moan. “Sun’s Kiss Lily,” he says, and captures Ferdinand’s hand against his cheek with his own palm.  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
“Toxic plant. Its pollen, it...” Ferdinand’s fingers twitch faintly against Hubert’s cheek, and it’s enough to derail his train of thought; instead, he turns his head, smears his lips faintly against the inside of Ferdinand’s wrist, and can barely think straight when he hears a faint noise from Ferdinand.  
  
“What,” Ferdinand starts, but then gasps when Hubert tugs on his hand and then presses a kiss to each on his fingertips. “What does it do?”  
  
“Fuck, Ferdinand, your fingers,” Hubert says, and it’s as if that faint noise has eroded what little endurance Hubert had left in him. “I’ve always wanted to, I’ve wanted— can I?”  
  
“Can you wh— ah!”  
  
Hubert slides the tips of two fingers into his mouth and the cry Ferdinand gives in response spurs him to action, sliding them deeper and laving his tongue against the tips, tasting salt on his tongue.  
  
“Hubert,” Ferdinand says shakily. “I thought—”  
  
Hubert sucks, and Ferdinand stops talking, only letting out a shaky breath when Hubert lets them slide out of his mouth with a faint pop.  
  
“I’ve wanted your fingers in me for so long, did you know,” Hubert says mindlessly, bringing Ferdinand’s hand back to his overheated cheek. “I’ve wanted you to fuck me open with them, then to— _Ferdinand,_ everything is so, I need—”  
  
“Hubert,” Ferdinand gasps again, “This flower, this lily, has it made you like this?”  
  
“Arousal responses, yes,” Hubert murmurs. “Raised temperature. Heightened sensation. Loss of inhibition. Increased blood flow. But you, the— wanting you, wanting you to fuck me, have your cock inside me, that’s just—”  
  
“ _Saints,_ ” Ferdinand moans, and pulls Hubert’s mouth to his own.

—

Hubert kisses back like he’s dying, and perhaps he is, just a little. Irrelevant, now, when Ferdinand’s lips are against his own, when they’re both stumbling awkwardly to their feet so they can bring their arms around each other. At some point Hubert’s lips part in a gasp and Ferdinand’s tongue - his _tongue_ \- licks against Hubert’s own, and the simple fact of this mixed with the roaring arousal in his blood is enough to send him weak at the knees, leaving him buckling until he’s sat on the edge of the desk they’d been working at.  
  
Ferdinand crowds into the space between his legs, still kissing him, and Hubert shudders, pulling Ferdinand closer and hitching a leg around the back of Ferdinand’s knee to keep him there. He can no more keep the whimpering sounds in the back of this throat quiet than he can ride a pegasus, every pass of Ferdinand’s hands across his sweat-damp shirt sending tremors through his body.  
  
Ferdinand, too, is as noisy in this situation as he is in any. “Hubert,” he gasps between their lips. “Hubert, is this alright, will you—”  
  
“Don’t you _dare_ stop, or I will hex you blind,” Hubert hisses, his hands tightening so that they bunch the fabric of Ferdinand’s jacket. He can feel his own hips shifting restlessly from how maddeningly hard he is already.  
  
“What do you need?”  
  
Hubert can’t help but bark an exhausted, bitter laugh at this. “What do I _need_? That’s all that this wretched thing does, Ferdinand, I need so much, it’s all I can do right now.”  
  
Ferdinand ducks his head to Hubert’s throat, runs a hand into the hair on the back of his head. “Let me help you,” he mumbles against the skin, and Hubert moans out loud when he starts to press sharp kisses there, more teeth than tongue.  
  
“Yes, Ferdinand, just— please—” Hubert starts to yank at Ferdinand’s jacket. “I want to see more of you.”  
  
Peeling off Ferdinand’s shirt and waistcoat and jacket, all neatly pressed and clearly chosen with an audience with the Emperor in mind, proves difficult with swollen fingers and the desperate way Hubert clutches and kisses at every sliver of new, bare skin revealed to him, like a man starved. So too, does Ferdinand find himself gasping out a shocked laugh and a “Steady—” when he reaches for Hubert’s own damp, rumpled shirt afterwards, and finds Hubert’s hands there already, trying to pull it over his own head without unbuttoning it properly. But eventually the two of them are bare to the waist, and Hubert is delirious with the feel of yet more skin against his own. Especially this skin, Ferdinand’s skin, tanned and freckled and dusted with golden hairs that probably catch the sunlight like fire. Every point of contact between the two of them hums in Hubert like untamed magic.  
  
“You’re so warm,” Ferdinand breathes, fingertips stuttering along the shape of Hubert’s spine. “You feel— tell me what you want, Hubert. Like, like you did about my fingers.”  
  
“Your fingers,” Hubert echoes, raggedly. He almost feels drunk. “Your fingers, I— touch me, Ferdinand. I don’t think I can last much longer, I feel like I’m losing my sanity. I need you to touch me and then I need, I _need_ you to spread me open with your fingers and then fuck this fever out of me.”  
  
“Saints, Hubert, your voice— to hear to you _say_ these sorts of things, I never thought I’d ever—” Ferdinand moans, but he doesn’t hesitate in tugging at Hubert’s breeches and smallclothes, the pair of them pulling them over his hips and down to the tops of his boots together. Hubert’s hips buck impatiently up into nothing until Ferdinand takes him properly in hand, at which point Hubert makes a noise so shamelessly needy that, if he’d currently had the capacity to care at all, he would never live down.  
  
“Show me what you like,” Ferdinand murmurs, and all Hubert can do is hiss “Anything, damn you, just touch me.”  
  
And sure enough - after a morning of agony, and then the overwhelming reality of Ferdinand’s hands on him, of those fingers wrapped around his leaking cock - it takes nothing more than a few strokes before he lurches forward, gasping, and spends across Ferdinand’s stomach and fingers. But even as he shudders it hardly feels like relief, and when Ferdinand takes his wet hand away he makes a questioning noise and Hubert realises he is still hard. This accursed plant will be the end of him.  
  
“More? Again?” Ferdinand says, hesitantly, kissing his neck again, and it takes a second to realise what he’s asking. Hubert shakes his head.  
  
“No,” he says. “The door to the left of the bookshelf. My bedroom.”  
  
“The door— ah. Yes, we can— oh,” Ferdinand agrees, and he starts to pull away but first Hubert catches his hand, tugs Ferdinand’s come-stained fingers back to his mouth and licks them clean as Ferdinand’s eyes flutter shut.  
  
“I never knew it would be like this,” he whispers, almost to himself, and Hubert is too busy laving his tongue between Ferdinand’s index and middle finger to respond, staring hungrily at the strain of Ferdinand’s own erection in his trousers. Eventually, though, Ferdinand pulls away with a sigh and then tugs the last of Hubert’s clothes off from his knees.  
  
“Your bedroom,” he says, firmly.  
  
As soon as they make it past the threshold Hubert shoves Ferdinand flat on his back to the mattress, and crawls astride him like he’s stalking prey, pulling his boots off and tossing them to the side before stripping the last of his clothes away. Ferdinand looks up at him, cock rigid against his furred belly, his hair fanned out across the pillow, and a man in more control of his faculties would be struck dumb by the adoration Hubert finds in those golden eyes. As it is, he can only bury his face in Ferdinand’s neck and rut against him, sending them both groaning, the sensation almost too much for Hubert so soon after his last orgasm but impossible to deny himself.  
  
“Another day,” Hubert rasps, “I’ll have this beautiful cock in my mouth, get to taste your come, but right now you need to fuck me.”  
  
Ferdinand moans again, nodding, and Hubert wrenches a hand out to the bedside table, fumbling blind in the drawer while still touching as much of Ferdinand as he can. When finds what he’s looking for he sighs with relief and presses it into Ferdinand’s waiting hand.  
  
“Yes, yes,” he chants, as a single slick finger presses gently against his entrance, slides in, and it takes all of what little sense Hubert has left not to push back onto it impatiently, not when this is almost all he’s thought about for hours, even as he tried to force his mind clear and his hands steady. Ferdinand is murmuring underneath him, stroking his other hand down Hubert’s thigh as he fucks first one and then another finger into him.  
  
“Is this what you wanted?” He asks Hubert as he works. “Is that what you thought about, what you need,” and Hubert nods frantically, hips canting, until the thrumming in his blood is too much.  
  
“I’m ready,” he says, and Ferdinand nods, withdraws, shudders as Hubert takes the vial of oil for himself and works Ferdinand’s cock slick. And when he finally, finally starts to sink down upon it, it feels like every part of his overheated, trembling body has been waiting for this.  
  
“Hubert,” Ferdinand breathes, like a prayer, both hands resting on Hubert’s shaking thighs now, but Hubert can’t speak. All he can do is brace himself against Ferdinand’s chest as he sinks lower, let out a noise like all the air has been forced out of him when he bottoms out.  
  
And then Hubert starts to move, and maybe he still burns, but this is cleansing, redemptive fire, Ferdinand still staring up at him like he’s never wanted anything else as Hubert fucks himself on his cock. When Ferdinand’s hips start to move, to drive himself deeper, Hubert is chanting affirmation again, until the bed is creaking an obscene rhythm with their movements and Hubert is sure he has no sanity left.  
  
“Saints, Hubert, you feel—” Ferdinand’s hands tighten on his thighs, but then Hubert grabs his wrist again, pulls it to his own still-hard cock, and Ferdinand nods and strokes him, neither of them able to hold their noises back.  
  
“Hubert,” Ferdinand gasps eventually, letting go of Hubert’s cock. Hubert heed it for the warning that it is, letting him slip out and then aligning their hips to slide their cocks together, and when Ferdinand shudders and spends between them it only takes a few more thrusts through the mess for Hubert to follow him over again, gasping against Ferdinand’s lips.  
  
And still, even as they lay together entangled, a mess of sweat and come, Hubert still burns.  
  
—  
  
Appointments for the day are abandoned and forgotten. Highly unprofessional, but right now, for Hubert, time and obligation is meaningless. What matters is Ferdinand’s hands and mouth on him, the sweet nothings he murmurs as lets Hubert fuck between his thighs, rut against him, worry bite marks into his chest and neck. Whatever quiets the song of his biology until Ferdinand can take Hubert again, this time with Hubert’s ankles hooked together around his waist.  
  
Hubert doesn’t know what time it is when they finally doze together but when he wakes up again the golden glow that precedes the sunset illuminates the room. He sits up, turning to look at Ferdinand, and sure enough he shines in the ruined sheets. Hubert can’t help but laugh.  
  
Ferdinand stirs at the sound, shifting softly. He sighs a smile. “Something funny?”  
  
Hubert shakes his head, still amused. “No, no. Well. Yes, actually. A lot of things.”  
  
Ferdinand peers at him. “You seem, ah. More lucid, as it were. Are you?”  
  
“Recovering, I think. In the sense of the word where I feel like I’ve been trampled by a warhorse. But you’re correct that I feel a little more in control of my faculties.”  
  
“Well. For that I am glad. And one day I will require the story of just how you got yourself into this mess, but that can wait.”  
  
They pause, awkwardly, and in the silence Hubert counts the purple marks on Ferdinand’s skin.  
  
“I must apologise for—” he begins to say, as Ferdinand begins “I must tell you—” and the two of them stutter to a halt until Ferdinand blurts “I cannot say this is how I expected my day to unfold but neither can I say I’m dismayed about it. Not at all, i’m fact, if, ah. You were concerned. But I also understand, if you’d rather—”  
  
“Ferdinand,” Hubert says, quickly. “When I said, before, about another time - I would hope you would hold me to that. If you were inclined.”  
  
And after all that they have done, Ferdinand still manages to blush at this, and then nod, and then he says “But I would still like to take you for a walk in the ornamental gardens one evening, as well.”  
  
Hubert leans down and kisses him, deep and long, and nods. “It would be my pleasure.”

**Author's Note:**

> Zantedeschia is a genus of calla lilly. Mersus can be translated from latin variously as dip, plunge, immerse, overwhelm, sink, drown, bury.
> 
> Thank you to OP for prompting this because I'm a sucker for sex pollen and this gave me the excuse to indulge. 
> 
> You can find me on twitter at @hausofthestars! we keep it safe for work there though.


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